WASHINGTON – The Biden government is willing to consider almost anything to increase the country’s diminishing supply of Covid-19 vaccines.
A new strategy document released on Thursday, totaling almost 200 pages, offers the first clear list of options that President Biden has before him, although he does not specifically say that he will actually take all the steps. On the list are some controversial ideas, such as reducing the amount of vaccine being administered to each American. He also made it clear that he wants to use the Defense Production Act to increase the production of essential supplies and some simpler options, such as buying more doses.
Governors and mayors across the country have complained in recent weeks that they do not have enough vaccines to meet current demand. Biden also acknowledged that the supply of physical vaccines is not where it should be to vaccinate most Americans. The Trump administration has already stopped holding the vials in reserve, hoping to launch more vaccines to the public.
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The easier idea, of buying more vaccines, may not be particularly useful in the short term. The United States has already purchased 200 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer and 200 million from Moderna, but full orders will not be delivered until mid-year. The country has the option to buy hundreds of millions more, but they would not be delivered until after that.
The Biden government will also “explore” so-called dose-saving strategies to stretch the vaccine supply, the report reveals. When the Trump administration considered a dose-saving strategy of administering a smaller volume of vaccine to each patient, the Food and Drug Administration hesitated.
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He said the idea “is premature and is not firmly rooted in the available evidence”.
“Without appropriate data to support such changes in vaccine administration, we are at significant risk of putting public health at risk, undermining historic vaccination efforts to protect the population of COVID-19,” then FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and the The agency’s top vaccine regulator Peter Marks said in a statement.
The Biden administration acknowledged this, saying it will look at dose reduction “while maintaining a commitment to comply with FDA recommendations”.
The Biden administration also plans to negotiate with existing vaccine suppliers to reduce the minimum shipment size. The current minimum order for the Pfizer vaccine is 975 doses, which some rural hospitals have claimed would be difficult to consume before the vaccine was discarded. Moderna does not have this problem: Its minimum delivery is 100 doses.
Biden’s new plan does not go so far as to promise to use the Defense Production Act to order companies to make more physical vaccines, although Biden’s Covid-19 coordinator Jeff Zients recently told the Washington Post that this option is on the table. table.
Instead, the plan provides for two uses of the Defense Production Act that the Biden government believes will increase the availability of vaccines.
The first is to use the law to produce so-called low dead space needles, which are needed to extract a sixth dose of Pfizer vaccine from the bottle. The second is to increase the supply of lipid nanoparticles needed to make all mRNA vaccines – the category into which Pfizer and Moderna products fall.
The Biden administration is also committed to closely supervising the vaccine manufacturing process. Federal officials will be present at the so-called contract manufacturing organizations that manufacture vaccine components such as syringes and vials “to monitor and support operations”.